By Paul Dalgarno

February 12, 2006

SCOTS will be urged to “think big” by making “small changes” under a new campaign from the Centre for Confidence and Well-being. The initiative, entitled Small Changes, will enlist the services of Scottish celebrities and thinkers in a bid to create happiness where it’s most needed.

The discipline includes the study of positive emotions and character traits as well as their implementation in everyday life.

In practice, the campaign will invite users to complete an online questionnaire, from which their personality can be assessed, before offering tailor-made suggestions for change. Simple measures, such as giving positive feedback to others and staying optimistic in the face of adversity, will also be recommended.

Chief executive of the Glasgow-based centre, Dr Carol Craig, said the programme would form the backbone of the centre’s activities over the next two years.

“The sophistication in what we’ll be doing will not be in the messages, which will be quite simple, but in delivering these messages in a way that’s unique to the individual,” she said. “If you’re the kind of person who would be more influenced because Ally McCoist or some other footballer was talking to you, then we would hope to have role models of that type to deliver the message.”

Small Change is a departure for the centre from last year’s successful Vanguard programme, which brought the benefits of positive psychology to Scots in leadership and management roles. Described more as a “mass campaign” or “viral marketing strategy” it aims to make a grassroots change to the gloomy national outlook.

T he completed project is expected to be launched at the end of the year. The initial planning phase for the campaign begins this week with several Scottish businesses already offering backing. While it was recently granted charitable status on educational grounds, the centre also receives project funding from the Hunter Foundation and the Scottish Executive.

It is hoped the programme will make inroads into Scotland’s spiralling suicide rates, which sit at twice the UK average for some age groups, as well as issues such as poor health and depression.

“I personally feel we will have not succeeded if we don’t reach those people who are in deprived areas, who are poor or who suffer from low aspirations and bad health,” said Craig. “I feel they are our biggest target group. [The Small Change project] is very ambitious and risky. Maybe it won’t work but we are firmly of the belief that it’s worth trying.”

The centre has attracted praise and derision in roughly equal measures since opening last year, with some arguing that its aims are unrealistic.

Professor of social psychology at Glasgow University Paddy O’Donnell said the programme had the potential to bring about “beneficial effects on self-esteem and self-efficacy” but he remained cautious.

“It will probably make a difference to the morale of people who use it but whether it will lead to any lasting social economic change is a different question,” he added. “There’s going to be self-selection here, in that the people who take advantage of this will be those who are a little better organised. You’re not going to target the real problem areas.”

The mood was echoed by SNP culture spokesman Michael Matheson who said he doubted the centre’s ability to effect any long-term changes to Scotland’s self-esteem.

“I’d be very sceptical as to whether the centre would be able to make any significant difference in tackling the problems within Scotland’s deprived communities or to Scottish society in general,” he said.

A detailed report of the centre’s first year of activities was published on its website last week.